


Stop On Green

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [173]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Cat!Steve, M/M, Roommates, witch!Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 09:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16343915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: It wasn’t Tony’s fault that he turned Steve into a cat.Well, it was his fault, but it wasn’t hisfault.





	Stop On Green

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: [This.](https://kurisu-80.tumblr.com/post/179159962347/anyone-ask-for-more-witch-tony-no-youll-get-it)

It wasn’t Tony’s fault that he turned Steve into a cat.

Well, it was his fault, but it wasn’t his  _ fault. _

He’d been super clear with Steve ever since the guy had moved in, ok: when the green light was on over his workshop door, it meant that he was, you know, working and concentrating and basically in his own world so if someone were to blithely ignore a previously agreed upon signal and wander into his sanctum sanctorum while was messing around with dead languages and  _ polypodiophyta _ and 100-year old damask roses then he couldn’t be held responsible for what might happen to that person, could he?

“Damn it!” he said to the cat who was Steve, the Steve who was now a large, confused-looking cat. “What’d I say about sneaking up on me, Rogers?”

“Mreow?”

“Exactly! But you did it anyway!”

The cat took a few steps, stopped, and then sat back on its haunches and stared balefully up at Tony. “Mreow,” it said again. Not it, Tony told himself. He.

“I mean,” Tony said, “don’t be mad. I’m pretty sure I can fix it. I just--I gotta figure out exactly what I did.”

The cat--big and blond, broad-shouldered and fluffy--ambled over and nudged his face against Tony’s shin. Stared up at him with blue, blue eyes and did it again until Tony knelt down on the stone floor and scritched him under the chin.

“Ok,” he said, the clench in his chest, the first flutters of panic, easing up just a bit. “I appreciate that. I’m sorry, too. Give me half an hour and I promise I'll fix it."

Or not.

A half an hour went by, a half a day, and then it was nearly midnight and Tony was exhausted, the air around him stuffed with green and gold and so many smells that he couldn’t sort one from the rest.

Steve the cat, on the other hand, had long since curled up on the hearth, on a clean-ish tea towel that Tony had put out for him and was, so far as Tony could see, perfectly content to stretch and to sleep in the heat until Tony got it all figured out.

Except Tony couldn’t, not right then, and when he finally admitted defeat (temporarily), he slumped over on his workbench and buried his head in his folded arms. He was so tired that every thought felt like sandpaper, every breath like Reynolds wrap, and there may have even, in his exhaustion, been a hint of a tear.

He felt a turn of fur against his ankle, the solid brush of a tail. 

“Mreow,” the cat said kindly.

Tony raised his head. “Yeah?”

The cat gave a low, rumbly purr and bumped his head against Tony's shin.

Tony sighed. “You’re right. It’ll all make more sense after sleep. Probably." He reached down to scratch at the cat’s back. "I sincerely freaking hope.”

And maybe it should’ve surprised him that the cat followed him out of his workshop, up the stairs and down the hall and into his bedroom. If Steve had had two legs instead of four, he damn well would’ve been shocked; in the two years they’d shared this place, Steve had never so much as set foot over the threshold of Tony’s bedroom, much less stretched out on Tony’s bed. It wasn’t like Tony had banned him or anything, but Steve was scrupulous about privacy, about making sure that Tony had his space--except in the one place that really mattered, and not for the first time, Tony wondered if Steve just didn’t grok it, what it meant when Tony said that he was a witch. That in this town, the name Stark had a weight to it, a particular history, and said history was the very reason that Tony’s  _ room for rent _ sign had stayed up for a year with no takers--until, from the outside, came Steve. 

“Well,” Tony grumbled, kicking out of his boots and shrugging out of his plaid shirt, “you get it now, don’t you? The whole witch thing. It’s not just about me chanting and wearing a pointy hat."

But there was no answer. Because the cat--the cat who was accidentally his best friend, Steve--was already asleep.


End file.
